Power transitions
During the administrations of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) (1945 to 1978) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) (1978 to 1988), Taiwanese were called benshengren (people of this province, 本省人) and Chinese were called waishengren (people from other provinces 外省人).
Although the terms benshengren and waishengren are still in use nowadays, they are wrong since the province (sheng, 省) was abolished during the administration of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) (1988 to 2000).
With the abolition of the province, Taiwanese literally — and jokingly — should be called benren (本人, self-people) and Chinese, including former Taiwan governor James Soong (宋楚瑜), should be called wairen (outsiders, 外人). Ideally, both are collectively called Taiwanese.
Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected as the first Taiwanese president from a party other than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for two terms (2000 to 2008).
Lee nominated Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to run for mayor of Taipei as a “new Taiwanese,” and Ma was later also elected for two terms as president (2008 to 2016). However, Ma acted more like a “new Chinese” than a “new Taiwanese.”
Thus, the KMT lost power to the DPP again, and Tsai Ying-wen (蔡英文), another Taiwanese, is now the president.
If the DPP wants to win the elections next year and in 2020, “Taiwan” and “Taiwanese” will be the master keys for success, as shown from the history of Taiwan’s power transitions.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
Sharing profits with workers
Here is a scenario that everyone is familiar with: Every time workers demand that the basic salary be raised so that it covers basic living expenses, employers stand up as one and say that this will raise their costs and force companies to close down or move overseas, and that this would have an even more negative impact on workers.
Ironically, international labor data from the Ministry of Labor shows that labor productivity — production per hour — in Taiwan’s manufacturing industry has increased by an annual average of 5.2 percent over the past decade, which is higher than the US, Japan and South Korea. However, the unit labor cost — a company’s compensation cost — has dropped by 2.4 percent in Taiwan, which is also more than in other countries. This makes it clear that while businesses enjoy high-efficiency labor at lower labor costs, they are stingy and unwilling to share their profits with workers.
In practice, past data shows that Taiwan’s real GDP — also called real output — continues to grow, that business profits are stable rather than deteriorating and that the profits of listed companies continue to reach new highs. Despite this, the salaries of the salaried class, regardless of how high, have stagnated or even dropped.
Furthermore, data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics’ (DGBAS) that was completed late last month shows that last year’s GDP stood at NT$17.1 trillion (US$570.2 billion) and that employee compensation reached NT$7.5 trillion, which translates to 43.81 percent of GDP. This is substantially less than in 1995, when employee compensation was 50.1 percent of GDP, and in 2005, when it was 45.4 percent.
By comparison, business profits, which hovered at about 30 percent prior to 1995, has now reached 35 percent. This has caused National Development Council Deputy Minister Kao Shien-quey (高仙桂) to say that employer-employee income distribution is imbalanced and that most of the fruits of economic growth ends up in the pockets of capitalists.
In addition, DGBAS officials do not deny that labor compensation as part of GDP has been gradually falling in Taiwan since the mid-1990s, and that this drop is greater than in the US, Japan and South Korea. This is the main reason for the expanding wealth gap.
In other words, when politicians advocate raising employee salaries and offsetting that raise with corporate tax deductions, they are in fact using taxpayers hard-earned money to subsidize companies’ salary increases and transferring the cost of these tax deductions back to the public.
If this isn’t absurd, I don’t know what is.
Wei Szu-yuan
Yilan County
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